Annually laminated sediments (varves) offer an effective means of acquiring high-quality paleoenvironmental records. However, the strength of a varve chronology can be compromised by a number of factors, such as missing varves, ambiguous laminations, and human counting error. We assess the quality of a varve chronology for the last three millennia from Steel Lake, Minnesota, through comparisons with nine AMS {sup 14}C dates on terrestrial plant macrofossils from the same core. These comparisons revealed an overall 8.4% discrepancy, primarily because of missing/uncountable varves within two stratigraphic intervals characterized by low carbonate concentrations and obscure laminations. Application of appropriate correction factors to these two intervals results in excellent agreement between the varve and {sup 14}C chronologies. These results, together with other varve studies, demonstrate that an independent age-determination method, such as {sup 14}C dating, is usually necessary to verify, and potentially correct, varve chronologies.

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Numerical weather prediction (NWP) models and atmospheric dispersion models rely on parameterizations of planetary boundary layer height. In the case of a stable boundary layer, errors in boundary layer height estimation can result in gross errors in boundary-layer evolution and in prediction of turbulent mixing within the boundary layer. We use large-eddy simulations (LES) of moderately stable boundary layers to characterize the effects of various physical processes on stable boundary layers. The stable boundary layer height is assumed to be a function of surface friction velocity, geostrophic wind, Monin-Obukhov length, and the strength of the temperature inversion atop the stable boundary layer. This temperature inversion induces gravity waves with a frequency determined by the strength of the temperature inversion.

There are underappreciated limitations of the conversion of {sup 14}C-ages to the fixed, calendrical time-scale that bear directly upon our understanding of the dynamic climate system, or the relationship between the collapse of one civilization and it's neighbor's. In this paper we present a quantitative assessment of the limits of {sup 14}C-geochronology and calibration onto the absolute calendrical time-scale over the Holocene. We take into account not only the inherent limitations of the {sup 14}C-calendar calibration curve, but also analytical uncertainties.

Atmospheric CO{sub 2} concentration ([CO{sub 2}]) is expected to rise from a current level of 372 {micro}mol mol{sup -1} to about 550 {micro}mol mol{sup -1} by the middle of the century (Prentice 2001). Accumulation of foliar carbohydrates is one of the most pronounced and universal changes observed in the leaves of C{sub 3} plants grown at elevated [CO{sub 2}] (Drake et al 1997). Carbohydrates are the product of photosynthetic cells and the substrate for sink metabolism. However, carbohydrates are not just substrates, changes in the composition and pool size of foliar carbohydrates have the potential to communicate source-sink balance and a role for carbohydrates in the regulation of the expression of many plant genes is well established (Koch 1996). Importantly, carbohydrate feedback is thought to be the mechanism through which long-term exposure to elevated [CO{sub 2}] leads to a reduction in carboxylation capacity (Rogers et a1 199S, Long et al 2004). Foliar sugar content has recently been linked to an increased susceptibility of soybeans to insect herbivory (Hamilton et al submitted). In addition increases in the C:N ratio of leaf litter of plants grown at elevated [CO{sub 2}] has been implicated in negative feedbacks on ecosystem productivity (Oechel et al …

We have performed two sets of experiments looking at laser-driven radiating blast waves. In one set of experiments the effect of a drive laser's passage through a background gas on the hydrodynamical evolution of blast waves was examined. It was found that the laser's passage heats a channel in the gas, creating a region where a portion of the blast wave front had an increased velocity, leading to the formation of a bump-like protrusion on the blast wave. The second set of experiments involved the use of regularly spaced wire arrays to induce perturbations on a blast wave surface. The decay of these perturbations as a function of time was measured for various wave number perturbations and found to be in good agreement with theoretical predictions.

The groundwater at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) contains many long-lived radionuclides, including {sup 99}Tc (technetium) and {sup 129}I (iodine), as a result of 828 underground nuclear weapons tests conducted between 1951 and 1992. We synthesized a body of data collected on the distribution of {sup 99}Tc and {sup 129}I in groundwater to assess their migration at NTS, at field scales over distances of hundreds of meters and for durations up to forty years and under hydrogeologic conditions very similar to the proposed geological repository at Yucca Mountain. The results of our study show that Tc does not necessarily exist as a mobile and conservative species TcO{sub 4}{sup -}, as has been commonly assumed. This conclusion is corroborated by recent in situ redox potential measurements, which show that groundwaters at multiple locations of the NTS are not oxidizing, and mobility of reduced Tc species (TcO{sub 2} {center_dot} nH{sub 2}O) is greatly decreased. Speciation of iodine and its associated reactivity is also complex in the groundwater at the NTS, and its effect on the mobility of iodine should be the subject of future studies.

A number of experiments to be performed on the planned Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) will have to use various types of reflective optics (see, e.g., [1]). On the other hand, LCLS will operate at a rate of 120 x-ray pulses per second. Therefore, when considering effects leading to the damage to its optics, one has to be concerned not only with a possible damage within one pulse, but also with effects accumulating during many pulses. We identify and analyze two of such effects: a thermal fatigue, and the intensity-dependent radiation damage. The first effect is associated with thermal stresses and deformations that occur in every pulse. The heating of the surface layers of the optics leads to a peculiar distribution of stresses, with a strong concentration near the surface. The quasistatic analysis of this problem was presented in [2]. In the present study, we show that transients in both transverse and longitudinal acoustic perturbations play a significant role and generally worsen the situation. If the maximum stresses approach the yield strength, the thermal fatigue causes degradation of the surface within a few thousands pulses. The second effect is related to formation of clusters of ionized atoms which lead to …

Laser generated shock reflectance data show that diamond undergoes a continuous transition from optically absorbing to reflecting between Hugoniot pressures 600<P{sub H}<1000 GPa. The data are consistent with diamond having a thermal population of carriers at P{sub H}{approx}600 GPa, undergoing band overlap metallization at P{sub H}{approx}1000 GPa and melting at 800<P{sub H}<1000 GPa. The results agree well with an equation of state model that predicts that elemental carbon remains solid throughout the interior of Neptune.

Block-structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) uses a mesh structure built up out of locally-uniform rectangular grids. In the BoxLib parallel framework used by the Raptor code, each processor operates on one or more of these grids at each refinement level. The decomposition of the mesh into grids and the distribution of these grids among processors may change every few timesteps as a calculation proceeds. Finer grids use smaller timesteps than coarser grids, requiring additional work to keep the system synchronized and ensure conservation between different refinement levels. In a paper for NECDC 2002 I presented preliminary results on implementation of parallel transport sweeps on the AMR mesh, conjugate gradient acceleration, accuracy of the AMR solution, and scalar speedup of the AMR algorithm compared to a uniform fully-refined mesh. This paper continues with a more in-depth examination of the parallel scaling properties of the scheme, both in single-level and multi-level calculations. Both sweeping and setup costs are considered. The algorithm scales with acceptable performance to several hundred processors. Trends suggest, however, that this is the limit for efficient calculations with traditional transport sweeps, and that modifications to the sweep algorithm will be increasingly needed as job sizes in the thousands of …

I present a promising route to harmonize distance measurements based on clump giants and RR Lyrae stars. This is achieved by comparing the brightness of these distance indicators in three environments: the solar neighborhood, Galactic bulge and Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). As a result of harmonizing the distance scales in the solar neighborhood and Baade's Window, I derive the new absolute magnitude of RR Lyrae stars, M{sub v}(RR) at [Fe/H] = -1.6 (0.59 {+-} 0.05, 0.70 {+-} 0.05). Being somewhat brighter than the statistical parallax solution, but fainter than typical results of the main sequence fitting to Hipparcos data, these values of M{sub V}(RR) favor intermediate or old ages of globular clusters. Harmonizing the distance scales in the LMC and Baade's Window, I show that the most likely distance modulus to the LMC, {mu}{sub LMC} is in the range 18.24 - 18.44. The Hubble constant of about 70 km/s/Mpc reported by the HST Key Project is based on the assumption that the distance modulus to the LMC equals 18.50. The results presented here indicate that the Hubble Constant may be up to 12% higher. This in turn would call for a younger Universe and could result in some tension between …

We present the results of numerical simulations of an atomistic system undergoing plastic shear flow in the athermal, quasistatic limit. The system is shown to undergo cascades of local re-arrangements, associated with quadrupolar energy fluctuations, which induce system-spanning events organized into lines of slip oriented along the Bravais axes of the simulation cell. A finite size scaling analysis reveals subextensive scaling of the energy drops and participation numbers, linear in the length of the simulation cell, in good agreement with the real-space structure of plastic events

A concept being developed for high current electron beams may have application to HEDP and is described here. It involves the use of planar Blumlein stacks placed inside an induction cell. The output end of the Blumlein stack is applied across a high gradient insulator (HGI). These insulators have been used successfully in the presence of kilo Ampere-level electron beam currents for tens of nanoseconds at gradients of 20 MV/meter.

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We describe an innovative highly parallel application program, ParaDiS, which computes the plastic strength of materials by tracing the evolution of dislocation lines over time. We discuss the issues of scaling the code to tens of thousands of processors, and present early scaling results of the code run on a prototype of the BlueGene/L supercomputer being developed by IBM in partnership with the US DOE's ASC program.

Most visualizations of security-related network data require large amounts of finely detailed, high-dimensional data. However, in some cases, the data available can only be coarsely detailed because of security concerns or other limitations. How can interesting security events still be discovered in data that lacks important details, such as IP addresses, network security alarms, and labels? In this paper, we discuss a system we have designed that takes very coarsely detailed data-basic, summarized information of the activity on each TCP port during each given hour-and uses visualization to help uncover interesting security events.

We present a high throughput (f/3) visible (3500 - 7000 Angstrom) Doppler spectrometer for toroidal rotation velocity measurements of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak plasma. The spectrometer has a temporal response of 1 ms and a rotation velocity sensitivity of {approx}10{sup 5} cm/s. This diagnostic will have a tangential view and map out the plasma rotation at several locations along the outer half of the minor radius (r/a > 0.5). The plasma rotation will be determined from the Doppler shifted wavelengths of D{sub alpha} and magnetic and electric dipole transitions of highly ionized impurities in the plasma. The fast time resolution and high spectral resolving power are possible due to a 6' diameter circular transmission grating that is capable of {lambda}/{Delta}{lambda} {approx} 15500 at 5769 Angstrom in conjunction with a 50 {micro}m slit.

Molecular recognition in biological systems typically involves large numbers of interactions simultaneously. By using a multivalent approach, weak interactions with fairly low specificity can become strong highly specific interactions. Additionally, this allows an organism to control the strength and specificity of an interaction simply by controlling the number of binding molecules (or binding sites), which in turn can be controlled through transcriptional regulation.

In position detection using matched filtering one is faced with the challenge of determining the best position in the presence of distortions such as defocus and diffraction noise. This work evaluates the performance of simulated defocused images as the template against the real defocused beam. It was found that an amplitude modulated phase-only filter is better equipped to deal with real defocused images that suffer from diffraction noise effects resulting in a textured spot intensity pattern. It is shown that the there is a tradeoff of performance dependent upon the type and size of the defocused image. A novel automated system was developed that can automatically select the right template type and size. Results of this automation for real defocused images are presented.

This paper presents a summary of the performance of our 2 kHz rotary fast tool servo and an overview of its control systems. We also discuss the loop shaping techniques used to design the power amplifier current control loop and the implementation of that controller in an op-amp circuit. The design and development of the control system involved a long list of items including: current compensation; tool position compensation; notch filter design and phase stabilizing with an additional pole for a plant with an undamped resonance; adding viscous damping to the fast tool servo; voltage budget for driving real and reactive loads; dealing with unwanted oscillators; ground loops; digital-to-analog converter glitches; electrical noise from the spindle motor switching power supply; and filtering the spindle encoder signal to generate smooth tool tip trajectories. Eventually, all of these topics will be discussed in detail in a Ph.D. thesis that will include this work. For the purposes of this paper, rather than present a diluted discussion that attempts to touch on all of these topics, we will focus on the first item with sufficient detail for providing insight into the design process.

Laser-based plasma spectroscopic techniques have been used with great success to determine the line shapes of atomic transitions in plasmas, study the population kinetics of atomic systems embedded in plasmas, and look at the redistribution of radiation. However, the possibilities for optical lasers end for plasmas with n{sub e}>10{sup 22}cm{sup -3} as light propagation is severely altered by the plasma. The construction of the Tesla Test Facility(TTF) at DESY(Deutsche Elektronen-Synchrotron), a short pulse tunable free electron laser in the vacuum-ultraviolet and soft X-ray regime (VUV FEL), based on the SASE(self amplified spontaneous emission) process, will provide a major advance in the capability for dense plasma-related research. This source will provide 10{sup 13} photons in a 200 fs duration pulse that is tunable from {approx} 6nm to 100nm. Since an VUV FEL will not have the limitation associated with optical lasers the entire field of high density plasmas kinetics in laser produced plasma will then be available to study with tunable source. Thus, one will be able to use this and other FEL x-ray sources to pump individual transitions creating enhanced population in the excited states that can easily be monitored. We show two case studies illuminating different aspects of plasma …

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This paper describes a face recognition method that is designed based on the consideration of anatomical and biomechanical characteristics of facial tissues. Elastic strain pattern inferred from face expression can reveal an individual's biometric signature associated with the underlying anatomical structure, and thus has the potential for face recognition. A method based on the continuum mechanics in finite element formulation is employed to compute the strain pattern. Experiments show very promising results. The proposed method is quite different from other face recognition methods and both its advantages and limitations, as well as future research for improvement are discussed.

Tunability is one of the key aspects of any laser system. In High-Gain Harmonic Generation Free Electron Laser (HGHG FEL) the seed laser determines the output wavelength. Conventional scheme of tunable HGHG FEL requires tunable seed laser. The alternative scheme [1] is based on compression of the electron bunch with energy-time correlation (chirped bunch) in the FEL dispersive section. The chirped energy modulation, induced by the seed laser with constant wavelength, compressed as the whole bunch undergoes compression. In this paper we discuss experimental verification of the proposed approach at the DUV FEL [2,3] and compare experimental results with analytical estimates.